Representing a major breakthrough in the development of Antony Gormley’s visual language, the early lead works – initiated in the mid-1970s, and developed amid the protracted geopolitical tensions of the Cold War – stand among the most iconic of the artist’s career. 

reintroduces audiences to these seminal sculptures, tracing how Gormley’s early experimentations with the material laid the groundwork for many subsequent bodies of work.

trace the evolution of Gormley’s sculptural practice, from the utilisation of found objects to the incorporation of his own body, allowing for an interplay between emptiness and fullness, as well as a tension between the physical and the metaphysical. Together, the works on display serve as propositions for embodiment, vulnerability, space and presence. On the gallery’s ground floor, three early object-based lead sculptures – 

 (1989/93) – reconfigure the relationship between subject and referent, engaging in a critical enquiry that unfolds dialectics of creation and destruction, presence and absence. The earliest of these, 

, consists of a trio of lead-wrapped, rock-like forms, prefiguring its later, figurative iteration 

 (1982). The work originated from a single granite rock, discovered by Gormley on a beach along Ireland’s west coast, which became the form for the three lead cases that contain the titular elements: one enclosing the original stone, another holding water, and the third containing air. Extracted from their original site and sealed within lead casings – thus removed from the register of the visible – these materials undergo a transformation that, in Gormley’s words, transposes them ‘from substance to imagination: from matter to mind’.

, lead’s intrinsic malleability – its ability to assume both hard and soft forms – becomes a site of convergence between human instruments and biospheric formations. Gormley regards this negotiation as one that ‘offers hope of balance and some form of integration between evolution and destruction.’ In the former work, 24 lead-encased objects – 12 natural, 12 human-made – are arranged along the gallery floor in descending scale, from the largest, a ball, to the smallest, a pea. At the midpoint of this spectrum, the proximity of two near-identical objects – a goose egg and a grenade – establishes an uncanny kinship, emphasised by their morphological likeness. This interplay recurs in 

, where small, 45 mm lead handgun bullets are gathered in a heap, evoking the form of a grain pile – a theme that extends into the two wall-based works in the ground floor gallery. 

 (1978), exhibited here for the first time, is a disc-like form composed of soldered-together lead fragments beaten over the shape of a convex mirror, while 

 (1978) preserves the impression of a machete, created by draping a lead sheet over the object. An instrument primarily associated with deforestation, its absence is signified by the cut-out silhouette of its hooked tip, exposing the wall behind it.

Translating a range of figurative poses, five discrete body sculptures in the lower ground floor gallery become vessels of receptivity, attuning us to the subtle interrelations between body, presence and the spatial environment. Upon entering the gallery, we encounter 

 (1992), the only fully enclosed form among the exhibited body cases. Pressed face-down to the ground, with its limbs splayed as if embracing the earth, it appears both anchored and exposed. Enacting a full-bodied surrender, the absolute proximity between body and planet – two sites of being – draws them into and foregrounds their mutual dependency, bound by their shared gravitational pull. Extending this meditation, two early works from 1983 expand on the body’s dialogue with the external world, tracing its synergy with intangible fields. In the first, 

, a seated figure cups one hand to its ear, where a small aperture opens into the sculpture’s recessed darkness. As Gormley reflects, ‘I have always thought of the darkness of the body as being equivalent to the darkness of the universe.’ Gormley drew inspiration from the 11th-century Tibetan siddha Milarepa, who, as he describes, would ‘listen for the echo of his own voice rebounding across mountain valleys from his Himalayan cave in Nyalam’. Nearby, 

 reclines with its head resting on a granite boulder, evoking a state of repose. In a parallel act of reference, Gormley associates the work with the biblical story of Jacob’s vision of a celestial ladder bridging earth and heaven. The figure’s hands, resting palms-down on the chest, and its parted feet emphasise its stillness, while two small holes at the nose reinforce the notion of breath as a conduit between autonomic and conscious bodily action.

 (1986–96) asserts a striking verticality. A singular striding form, its head is replaced by an elongated, house-shaped structure extending over five metres horizontally, punctuated at either end by small windows that reveal an interior void. Despite its apparent forward motion – one foot placed before the other – the figure remains rooted, embodying the tension between the body as both sanctuary and a vessel of perpetual displacement, engaging notions of habitation, constraint and the reciprocal shaping of body and environment. To make 

 (1983), Gormley pressed white clay into a hospital blanket around an empty silhouette of his body lying prone in the untouched wool. Lifted from the floor and pinned to the wall, the impression undergoes a perceptual shift – what once suggested rest is now reanimated, the figure’s head breaking beyond the blanket’s edge like a swimmer gasping for air.

 (1993) – the work that lends its name to the exhibition – absorbs its surroundings while remaining self-contained, its form reminiscent of an ancient, seated scribe. Though enclosed, small openings at the ears suggest a body attuned to its environment – registering movement, sound and activity while maintaining a state of profound stillness. Here, stillness does not equate to withdrawal but rather a deepened immersion in the sensory field, functioning as both probe and conduit, mapping the ambient reverberations and unseen frequencies of site and space. Reflecting Gormley’s late-20th-century preoccupations amid the threat of nuclear catastrophe, 

 – like all the lead sculptures in this exhibition – materialises his enduring enquiry into the potency of sculpture’s intrinsic stillness and silence, celebrating its capacity to serve as an instrument through which we examine our own condition. A ‘gift from the past’, he writes, these forms hold both memory and the potential to become ‘a seed of the future’.

Witness: Early Lead Works

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Witness: Early Lead Works, White Cube Mason’s Yard, London

Antony Gormley in Conversation with Susan May, Royal Institution